February 25, 2022 - Robert Smalls

To do the life story of Captain Robert Smalls justice, we would need a full-length action movie starring Denzel Washington. The courage and sheer daring exhibited by the twenty-two-year-old enslaved Robert Smalls on May 13, 1862, should be a feature in American history classes. The future congressman and Union war hero was born a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina, behind his owner’s house where his mother worked.
At the age of twelve, Smalls was “hired out” and sent to Charleston, a common practice requiring slaves to send any money they earned back to their owners. He was allowed to keep one dollar of his wages each week, but Smalls kept more than that weekly dollar-he kept the knowledge of the harbor and the ships that he learned while working on the ships sailing in and out of Charleston Harbor and learned how to navigate. While in Charleston, Smalls also met a young woman, Hannah. With their owners’ permission, they married and moved into an apartment, soon parents of two children. Smalls feared that they might be separated if Hannah’s owner decided to sell her or the children and asked to purchase them. Unfortunately, Smalls could not raise the purchase price, and he knew that trying to escape to the North with a young child and an infant posed more dangers for the family. Instead, he came up with another plan.
The Civil War found him on a steamboat chartered by the Confederates, the CSS Planter, part of a ten-man crew that included three whites, with the rest slaves.
Smalls was working as a pilot, though only listed as “wheelman” since only whites could rank. The Planter’s captain would sometimes leave the ship, along with the white officers, so they could spend the night with their wives and families in their own homes in Charleston. Doing so was in direct violation of Confederate military orders, General Orders, No. 5, requiring that white officers and their crews stay on board the ships 24/7 while docked at the wharf. However, the captain, who probably trusted his crew, would no doubt have never considered that slaves would consider making off with a steamship, much less be able to accomplish the feat, especially in Charleston Harbor which was difficult to navigate but also guarded by Confederate forces.
The Planter’s captain drastically underestimated Robert Smalls, who planned to commandeer the ship, rescue his family and the family of his crew from slavery, and deliver the Planter to the Union Naval ships anchored just outside the Harbor. Smalls shared his plan with the other men, a risk he had to take. They agreed to his plan, knowing that if the Confederates won the war, they would live in slavery the rest of their lives, yet also knowing that they risked their lives for the hope of freedom for themselves and their families.